Jump to content

Logic vs a "real studio"


Ket

Recommended Posts

In what way? Yes, Logic allows you a lot more tracks (duh!) and much easier editing... So what?
Exactly my point. So what? So what if you're using analogue or digital -- none of that matters.

 

I agree WRT recording medium. I do not agree WRT dynamics, EQ, 'summing', or other types of simulated processing.

 

I agree that talent and material will show thru any recording experience, for better or worse.

 

And I agree that there have been great records made on less than pro equipment... GBV's Bee Thousand, The Black Keys' The Big Come Up, the first Suicide record... But nobody in their right mind could say that these records sound professionally made.

 

And a digital 'compressor' still ain't a compressor, Guitar Rig still ain't a guitar amp, and Logic still ain't a mixer.

 

Look at all the LinnDrum madness from the 80s, check out some of the snare sounds from that era. A few people pulled it off, but most of it sounds like ass today. I'm sorry.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It boils down to a matter of taste. Certainly, something done with high-end gear in a high-end studio is going to have that SHEEN that's difficult to get without it, but saying that one record as opposed to another doesn't sound "pro" is pointless unless the differences are painfully obvious.

 

You like the sound that can only be produced through analogue, pro gear. I get that. But that's YOUR particular taste. That doesn't negate all the recordings that don't measure up to your standards -- like those produced solely in logic.

 

Your average listener, the guy who BUYS or downloads the records, doesn't give a crap what microphone an engineer used unless it truly sounds awful. He's not gonna care if those strings in the background were produced by a philharmonic orchestra or the Vienna Strings Library. To him, if the song is good and it's competently produced -- even if entirely in Logic, using Logic's stock sounds and compressors and guitar amp modeling -- then he'll consider it pro material.

 

As recording enthusiasts, we all have our likes and dislikes re sound. But anyone making a blanket statement that Logic can't produce pro mixes is -- and I'm gonna use the S-word here -- simply practicing snobbery.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

spent 3 hours last night just listening to ´pro´music

 

the set-up:

 

my mbp firing out random tunes from my raher large itunes collection, all encoded at an (ipod happy) 320 kbps....ideally they wouldn´t be compressed at all, but i´m travelling at the moment and an ipod fits in my pocket better than 400 cd´s...

 

pumped through a saffire le interface to my rather sexy and way expensive grado headphones

 

to me, lying in bed in the dark just ´listening´to music...it wasn´t conducted as an experiment

 

so with this level playing field i really learnt a lot......

 

not all professional music sounds professional......

 

there is no golden rule

 

some tunes sounded crystal clear (but not overly), full in the lows and mellow just about every stage in between....

 

then the next track would have me reaching for the volume to protect my ears from overly compressed harsh noise

 

next tune has me reaching for the eq...after messing around for a while, cut it back to flat and move to next tune

 

repeat and repeat again

 

i have a very ecclectic taste in music, granted....and i´ve always assumed that the difference between amateur and pro is whether i had to buy it......

 

so why did only x percent of this music sound ´professional´, and why didn´t i enjoy these ´less professional´ sounding tunes any less??????

 

because as most have posted....it´s the song that´s important...the energy, the idea, the performance....and actually sometimes the most interesting tunes come from turning the whole ´pro sound´ idea on it´s head

 

imagine you´ve just kitted out your new studio in anticipation of recording a pro artist.....badly drawn boy walks in to record ´hour of the bewilderbeast´, grabs your dictaphone off the table and goes and records most of the tunes in the back of your car , shed, toilet etc

 

or julian casablancas (the strokes) comes in for vocals...you show him your new neumann fed to a glistening new valve opto-whammo comp thingy, but he thinks the vocals would be better if he shouted them through a hole in his shoe from the otherside of the room with the delay fedback through a car speaker sidechained with a vocoded fart

 

you get the picture

 

every album SOUNDS different...how horrible would it be if they didn´t

Link to comment
Share on other sites

another $0.02 (value depreciated of course)

 

the loudness war kind of moots the whole comparison. all these big outboard studios get that real quality, for sure, but it all gets compressed to utter crap so who cares.

 

and funny how this became an itb vs otb thread. truth of the matter is for the best results, combine.

 

and i'm sorry but in a digital world hardware equipment can be sooooooo limiting. we're living in a different age. its no longer about having that one box on that one setting that gives that perfect sound. its about creating sounds, from synthesizing new sounds to 'synthesizing' new outboard signals. if you're for the old school approach then cool, save your chips and buy a bunch of really cool boxes. but if you're looking towards the future you'll have to break out of those boxes (uhhhh the mixed metaphor is breaking down here). all this hubub about what is professional IMHO is bullshit. professionalism is in your approach to the music not what you use to create it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Don't forget that all of those classic albums we love were partially sculpted by limitations. Right - limitations. The modern DAW has removed so many of those limitations that we now have a hard time even imposing a characteristic sound on our own music. In the old days, you had your instruments, a few tracks, and some tube pres and compressors, eq's and some tape machine tricks for delay and some hallways, and stairwells and large metal plates for reverb. It was all very limited and very organic. And more than one very talented person worked on it all. And that's the sound of Sgt. Pepper and Led Zep . . . Sure it's great. But if you expect to be able to sit in your basement with just a DAW, some virtual instruments and yourself - then unless you are Stevie Wonder, you might not get the sound you have been aspiring to. If you had Paul, and John, and Ringo, George and their instruments (and George Martin too) then sure, you could produce Sgt. Pepper with Logic. Just record the tracks and all the editing would probably go a lot faster than it did. It would sound great. Use Logic's delays and compressors and eq's etc.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you had Paul, and John, and Ringo, George and their instruments (and George Martin too) then sure, you could produce Sgt. Pepper with Logic. Just record the tracks and all the editing would probably go a lot faster than it did. It would sound great. Use Logic's delays and compressors and eq's etc.

 

Maybe if you'd never heard the original, and maybe if you'd never heard anything recorded and mixed on real equipment.

 

If y'all are saying it's so easy to do this, please give us a list of examples of really great, full sounding (not deliberately lo-fi, which is a different animal) records done totally ITB.

 

You can start by naming one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

the loudness war kind of moots the whole comparison. all these big outboard studios get that real quality, for sure, but it all gets compressed to utter crap so who cares.

 

and funny how this became an itb vs otb thread. truth of the matter is for the best results, combine.

 

Two very, very good points.

 

Is This It was recorded by Gord Raphael on a very minimal Logic (5, or 6) setup. He claims to have used mostly stock plugins, but he did sum on a Soundcraft Ghost thru 888s, and I bet he had a few comp/lims on the input side, too. He's no dummy, too...

 

A lot of engineers would say this is a pretty lo-fi record, and they're right, but it was hugely successful. Captures the band very well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

well, I will say this, logic is very inconsistant with its mixdown problems in logic 8.

 

There have been reports of logic 8 sounding "different" then logic 7, This logic 8 update alone proves the point that logic 8 is not a pro app.

 

Can you imagine the nightmare scenario of having clients who mixed a song down in logic 7 and were happy with the sound, only for a logic update to change your mixdown because apple felt it best to make logic 8 sound different?

 

making a program sound different means its not the same program.

 

with outboard gear, its always going to have that sound, with logic, as you can see, its hit or miss.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Humberto, why dont you crawl back under the rock you came out from. Stop posting crap that you know nothing about. It is obvious that you cant find you way out of a paper bag much less around a DAW. The external sync setting in Logic 8 is exactly where it was in Logic 7. It sounds different because they improved the channel eqs. And yes it is a different app because it has been rewritten from the ground up. Why don't you just go use Pro Tools, Sonar or what ever and be done with it. If you hate Logic so much why are you even using it. If it is going nowhere then get rid of it. Since it seems to suck so bad why do you even bother with it? People like you need to complain. If it was not here it would be with whatever other app you decided to grace your presence with. Edited by Kouly
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Humberto, why dont you crawl back under the rock you came out from. Stop posting crap that you know nothing about.

 

The external sync setting in Logic 8 is exactly where it was in Logic 7.

 

 

do you work for apple? Why are you trying to mislead people about features that have been removed?

MIDIclockSyncRemoved.gif.29145cfcbf62b6ae8d50529919cf3601.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you had Paul, and John, and Ringo, George and their instruments (and George Martin too) then sure, you could produce Sgt. Pepper with Logic. Just record the tracks and all the editing would probably go a lot faster than it did. It would sound great. Use Logic's delays and compressors and eq's etc.

 

Maybe if you'd never heard the original, and maybe if you'd never heard anything recorded and mixed on real equipment.

 

If y'all are saying it's so easy to do this, please give us a list of examples of really great, full sounding (not deliberately lo-fi, which is a different animal) records done totally ITB.

 

You can start by naming one.

Well, "really great" is a matter of opinion. And since I'm not privy to what goes on behind the scenes for most productions, it would be impossible to say who produces totally in Logic.

 

But even it it hasn't been done -- and again, there's no way to know -- this doesn't mean it CAN'T be done. And to insist it can't is just plain silly. I make no claims that I'm the greatest engineer in the world, but I have no problem getting a "pro" sound in logic, using EXS samples and standard logic plugins.

 

That said, there are a couple of producers in the UK who use Logic exclusively and are profiled here -- granted as a promo for logic -- but they're doing it nonetheless:

 

http://www.apple.com/uk/pro/profiles/futurecut/

 

But, as we've said at least a dozen times here, the material is 99 percent of the production, so I'm not quite sure what you're trying to prove by this request.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

If y'all are saying it's so easy to do this, please give us a list of examples of really great, full sounding (not deliberately lo-fi, which is a different animal) records done totally ITB.

 

You can start by naming one.

 

I don't think I can name one ITB or OTB from the last 10 years that would compare. That's my point. It's not the equipment, it's the artistry (or lack thereof), the art of songwriting and arranging.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...